


Staying

by hearts_kun



Category: Persona 5
Genre: (rather implied than really present), Bitterness, Gen, Happy Ending, Hope, M/M, Post-Canon, Secret Santa, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-27
Updated: 2018-12-27
Packaged: 2019-09-28 20:22:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,066
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17189774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hearts_kun/pseuds/hearts_kun
Summary: Two years passed. First thing after being released from the ward, Goro goes to Yongen-Jaya to visit the only person who once seemed to care about him. He doesn't expect their meeting to be that awkward, though.





	Staying

**Author's Note:**

> Fumichka, sweetie, Merry Christmas! That's for you entirely <3

They’re standing at the middle of Yongen-Jaya. It’s November evening, pretty cool outside, people are hurrying home from work.

“What are you doing here?”

Goro smiles and unconsciously tries to correct a strand of hair on his shoulders, forgetting that he cut it short just a few days ago, being finally released from the ward. Anxiety lives in his spine. Amamiya’s eyes are sharp; Amamiya’s hands are trembling fists. Goro smiles and takes a step back.

“Got lost on the way home,” he lies.

Amamiya scowls and looks away. His hair is longer than two years ago, collected in a messy, fuzzy ponytail. His glasses are gone, color lenses glimmering on his once grey eyes. He’s wearing a shirt, a sweater vest, a tie and a pair of dark thin gloves. His expression has lost its softness and closeness; he seems confident, his posture is straight, his movements — intimidating.

Goro feels his own smile slide down his face and neck, sticky, slimy. He chuckles quietly, brushes his hand over his new short bristly haircut, and it tickles his palm. He feels so far away from everything, so lost. So not himself that even Amamiya and his pathetic attempts to recreate Goro’s image seem less fake.

He thinks, for a moment, maybe he shouldn’t have lived. The world would move on. Amamiya would build himself a fake personality. Shido would have other sins to atone for. Sakura and Okumura would probably be happy. Sakamoto wouldn’t have to get frustrated at every TV for showing Goro’s face anymore. That would’ve been so much better, wouldn’t it? And here he stands: short hair, a simple hoodie, anxiety crawling inside his bones; he stands, wanting to live. There’s something utterly wrong with that, he guesses, then takes another deep breath and realizes, these thoughts don’t have control over him anymore. Even if the world doesn’t want him, he’ll stay, because he wants to and he doesn’t care about the world.

Amamiya takes off his gloves and shoves them in his pockets, same with his tie and a hair bobble. He’s nervous. He runs his fingers through an awful nest of black hair that is his head, again and again, fiercely, and it looks weird.

“You’re making it even worse,” Goro notices quietly, not sure if he should leave now, and Amamiya jerks, as if he’d forgotten Goro was there at all.

“No, no,” he mumbles, panicking and sweating, “I thought… I thought…”

 _Ah_ , Goro realizes suddenly. That’s right, maybe Amamiya missed the news about the second coming of detective prince ending up in a psychic ward after healing from half-lethal wounds. After all, his manager put a lot of efforts to not allow this story go farther than a short note on the news sites. No TV coverage, no radio programs. Silence, the death of a career, and his head finally being free from that annoying bishounen mop looking like some ugly wig. The Phantom Thieves probably knew better than to search for news about Goro Akechi anyway.

“I lived. Left the palace. There, in the engine room,” he explains shortly, and Amamiya chokes on air, squeezing his eyes shut, hiding his face in his hands. Goro makes step back forward, “Are you o…”

He then sees a drop fall on Amamiya’s shirt, and another one on the sweater vest, and looks up, but there are no clouds in the dark evening sky. Amamiya is crying.

This seems so ridiculous. Out of the blue. Ironic, maybe. _You don’t have to cry,_ Goro wants to say, but words don’t come out of his mouth, and he shuts up, tugs at the end of his hoodie and looks around.

Maybe it’s time for him to leave before this goes too far.

“I’ll just. Go home. Alright? See you some time.” The asphalt is delusively soft under his steps, and the air seems warm, even though just yesterday temperature dropped by few degrees at once, no less. He feels separate from his body, but at the same time — light, freed from some weight on his shoulders.

He doesn’t wait for Amamiya to reply, just walks away calmly, expecting the night to engulf him. There’s nothing for them to talk about, not now, when Amamiya is seemingly broken after two whole years of thinking Goro was dead; impersonating him; sublimating his weird feelings through a nonsensical outfit, hand-made cosplay for starters. There’s no way they can build a conversation like this, Goro thinks as he walks to the train station, carefully avoiding Leblanc, and yet…

Amamiya catches up, and his face is terrifically wet. He doesn’t seem confident anymore; he can barely speak, simply handing Goro his phone with a new contact form opened.

“Please,” Amamiya begs.

Goro locks the screen and hands the phone back. He hasn’t changed his phone number, neither has he deleted any contacts. They should be good, well, unless Amamiya changed his. But then — wouldn’t that be just fate?

“I will visit Leblanc tomorrow morning,” he says. He isn’t very busy. If Amamiya doesn’t hate him, they can give each other another chance, can they not?

He takes a few steps underground, and Amamiya catches his hand.

“Stay.”

Goro tilts his head. He isn’t going too far, but he guesses, it might seem like a drastic distance for Amamiya right now. But… The scar under his hoodie starts itching, and he winces, and turns, and meets Amamiya’s lensed eyes.

“Stay,” he repeats, and Goro swallows the lump he didn’t know he had in his throat. It’s not easy to understand after two years spent in the white walls of a ward, surrounded by sane doctors and staff, but he remembers, he understands. It’s not that Amamiya wants him to stay in Yongen-Jaya. It’s about the depths of Mementos reminding him hell, and the underground — reminding Mementos. It’s about Goro himself never wanting to stay before, always living to fade, calculating his ways to the end.

That makes him smile, somehow, that despite all the dress-up Amamiya still knows him. Not the present him, but the past him, that desperate boy, always unnoticed by everyone through his masks, only ever thinking of going away.

These few steps down, they don’t matter, Goro decides. He walks these few steps back up, guided by Amamiya’s hand still holding his wrist. He smiles — genuinely.

“I’m staying,” he says.

This time he doesn’t lie.


End file.
